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CHAPTER NINE

DOMINIC DASHWOOD’S house, although about four times the size of Marchwood, was nothing like Lola had imagined it would be.

Because he was so rich—richer by reputation than anyone else she knew—she had been convinced that the place would be filled with costly antiques. But it wasn’t. It was a minimalist’s heaven, with its streamlined, carefully chosen pieces of furniture and its pale, polished wooden floors, occasionally strewn with silk rugs far too beautiful to walk on.

And in the midst of all this understated wealth sat Lola’s mother, June Hennessy, desperately trying not to look nervous and failing spectacularly.

She was a woman whose youthful prettiness had survived, to give her face something approaching a serene kind of beauty in her forties. Her ash-blonde hair was still glossy and her beautiful pale blue eyes owed much to her Austrian parentage.

Sitting opposite her now, Lola was taken aback by how different she and her mother looked—and how she had always subconsciously pushed those differences to the back of her mind. She was also still reeling from the fact that Geraint had managed to get her mother up from Cornwall at such short notice, and seemingly without any trouble at all—the man must have hidden strengths!

‘Will you tell me the whole story, Mum?’ she asked as she sat down on a squashy white sofa, her hands locked tightly together in her lap. ‘Every bit of it, please. Don’t spare me details just because they might hurt me—I need to know, you see.’

‘Yes, I realise that now,’ said her mother slowly. ‘Geraint made me realise that.’

Geraint? Why on earth had her mother’s voice softened to speak of Geraint in an almost awe-filled way?

But that was not important now. She had come to talk about her father, and Geraint could wait. Lola lifted her chin expectantly.

‘Tell me, Mum.’

‘It’s a story as old as time itself,’ her mother began quietly. ‘I was just eighteen when I met Peter Featherstone—I was working as a barmaid at the local yacht club and he was taking an extended sailing holiday after pulling off the biggest merger of his career.’

Her smile was tinged with nostalgia as she looked across the room at her daughter. ‘He was just over twenty years older than me—but he certainly didn’t look it. Or act it! He was a devastatingly handsome man—with dark, curly hair and bright blue eyes just like yours! And he was quite unlike anyone I had ever met before—funny, good-looking, rich and confident. I fell madly in love with him, and, being thoroughly inexperienced, made no attempt whatsoever to hide it. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me, of course, not in that way.’

‘He—didn’t?’ asked Lola in surprise.

Her mother shook her ash-blonde head. ‘Of course he didn’t! I was too young. Much too young. And gauche. Naive, too. I was looking for Mr Right, and he certainly didn’t fit the bill—or so he told me!’

‘He told you that?’ asked Lola breathlessly.

‘Yes, he did. Peter had never married because he recognised the limitations of marriage—for him, anyway. He told me all this quite honestly—and although it was not what I wanted to hear—I always respected him for his openness.’

‘But you had his baby, Mum?’ said Lola, her brow furrowed with confusion. ‘How—if he was so against it? What made him change his mind?’

Her mother threw her an odd look. ‘This part of the story, too, lacks originality. That’s one of the things you discover as you grow older, Lola—that patterns of behaviour carry on repeating themselves, no matter how often they fly in the face of experience—’

‘Mum, please.’

June Hennessy smiled. ‘It was the night of the yacht club ball—a very prestigious affair—and I was to be Peter’s partner.’

‘How come?’

‘Oh, I had dropped so many hints I think he was too much of a gentleman to say no! And he was planning to leave the following day. I think he thought that no harm could be done on that final evening. . .which just goes to prove how wrong you can be.’

Her mother’s pale eyes took on a far-away look. ‘The combination of a dress which revealed far too much cleavage together with the champagne and the night and the music. . .’ Mrs Hennessy looked at her daughter with a defiant spark in her eyes. ‘I’m not proud of what happened that night, Lola, but neither do I regret it. Nor shall I regret it for as long as I live—for Peter demonstrated to me what making love could be like.’

‘What h-happened?’ asked Lola in a low voice.

‘Peter left the following day, as planned. I assured him that nothing would happen—indeed I was convinced that nothing would. But three weeks later I discovered I was going to have a baby. . .’

‘Me,’ breathed Lola.

‘You.’ Her mother smiled. ‘You.’

Mrs Hennessy shrugged. ‘What could I do? I had no idea where Peter had gone. And times were different then—there was a shame and a stigma attached to having a child out of wedlock. John—the man you thought was your father—had been in love with me since we were at school together. I think he was almost pleased that I had gone and got myself pregnant, because it meant that I was vulnerable to his proposal of marriage.’

‘And did you—love him?’ asked Lola slowly.

‘I grew to love him. There’s a difference, you know. At first I was just grateful for his support and understanding—but he was a good husband and, more importantly, a good father, too. Oh, I never loved him the way I had loved Peter—but then I never expected to. That kind of love doesn’t come more than once in a lifetime. But John accepted that.

‘And John treated you as his own—something for which I will always be grateful—and he was content with the love I could give him. He came to the marriage with only one stipulation. . .’

Lola suspected that she had already guessed what that stipulation had been. ‘And that was?’

‘That to all intents and purposes you would be his child. You were to be registered in his name on the birth certificate.’

‘And did Peter never come back?’

June Hennessy gave a smile which was tinged with regret. ‘Yes, he did. When you were about six months old, he came to find me. He knew that you were his, of course he did, but I denied it, and he played along with what I wanted. I never wanted to trap Peter into staying, you see. He offered me money to support you, but I never took it. John wouldn’t have wanted it, and neither, more importantly, did I.’ She paused. ‘He went away that night—and I never saw him again.’

Lola stared at a magnificent seascape which dominated one of Dominic Dashwood’s immense white walls. ‘Why did you never tell me this before, Mum?’ she asked quietly.

‘For what? To upset John? To make you discontented? All for the sake of a tie which had been broken long ago? Peter never got in touch again—your appearance might have caused complications in his life. People change, you know, Lola. What if he had denied all knowledge of you? Wouldn’t it have been frustrating for you to learn that you had an immensely rich man for a father, yet for you to have no legal claim to his estate?’

‘I wonder why he left me this house?’ wondered Lola aloud.

‘Perhaps he knew that he was going to die. Perhaps he felt it was time to redress the balance of things—to make amends for having deserted you—even though I gave him no opportunity to do anything other than that.’

‘And when Dad died,’ Lola ventured, ‘did you never think about tracking Peter down then?’

‘To live happily ever after, I suppose?’ Her mother gave her a small smile. ‘I felt a little too old and too tired to believe in fairy tales by that stage in my life. Sometimes it’s better to have a dream and to hold onto it in your heart, Lola, rather than see it being crushed by the pressures of life.’

‘But when you heard about the inheritance from me why didn’t you tell me the story then? Why keep it secret all this time?’

Mrs Hennessy sighed. ‘I was too frightened. And too afraid of what your reaction might be if I told you the whole story. Afraid that you might judge me and find me wanting—afraid that you might be ashamed of your somewhat unconventional parentage.’ Her mother reached a hand out. ‘Are you angry with me for having kept it from you, darling?’

Lola took the outstretched hand and grasped it firmly. ‘How could I be angry with you, Mum? I love you, and you did your best. What more could anyone ask?’

Mrs Hennessy smiled. ‘And speaking of love,’ she said softly, ‘is there anything you want to tell me, darling?’

Lola brought her fingertips up to cover her mouth, so that her words were muffled and indistinct, but her mother understood them well enough.

‘Can you love someone even though you haven’t known them very long, Mum? Can you want someone with a blinding passion even though sometimes they make you so mad you want to hit them? Is it possible to want a man’s baby even when you know it would be the worst thing in the world which could happen to you at this time?’

‘Yes, yes, and yes,’ answered her mother, although she blanched a little at the mention of babies. ‘I gather we are now talking about Geraint?’ she added drily.

Lola nodded, her eyes wide and confused. ‘But his motives for getting to know me were so wrong, Mum! He was out seeking revenge.’

Mrs Hennessy shook her blonde head. ‘It doesn’t matter what his motives were when he didn’t know you, Lola—what matters is what his motives became once he did know you! How he behaved towards you. Was he honourable and true?’

And Lola recognised that, yes, he had been honourable and true—there was no doubt about that. ‘Oh, Mum, I feel so muddled!’

‘Then go to him. Ask him what he feels, what he truly feels.’

‘I’m scared. . .’

‘And Geraint?’ quizzed her mother. ‘Don’t you think that he could be scared too?’

Lola laughed aloud. ‘Geraint? Scared? I don’t think so!’

‘I might be scared, if I thought you might refuse to many me, Lola,’ came a deep voice from behind them, and Lola whirled round to see Geraint holding a wriggling Simon in his arms. The baby was wearing a pair of yellow trousers which clashed horribly with his purple sweatshirt. ‘He was sick after you left, so I’ve changed him. These were the only clothes I could find,’ he added, and pulled an expressive face.

Lola blinked. Geraint—changing babies? And was her hearing growing defective, or had she just heard him asking her to marry him?

June Hennessy got to her feet, walked quickly across the room and held her arms open to the baby, whereupon Simon gurgled and fastened onto her like a limpet.

‘What a friendly baby!’ Mrs Hennessy observed automatically. ‘Now, you two go away,’ she instructed her daughter and Geraint firmly. ‘Away! And don’t come back until you’ve sorted things out one way or another.’

Lola was stricken with a peculiar sense of embarrassment, and could look at neither her mother nor Geraint. In fact, she was pleased when Geraint took her firmly by the arm and propelled her out of the house as if the place were about to be detonated by a bomb.

He did not speak until they were next door again, and he had turned on the gas fire in the small study. Then he sat back on his heels so that the flickering flames cast enigmatic shadows on his finely boned face.

‘Can you ever forgive me?’ he asked quietly.

‘For what?’ Lola swallowed. ‘For forcing me to confront truths which have lain buried for too long? For making my mother rethink her philosophy and tell me something which perhaps I should have learnt about years ago? Those are things for which I should be thanking you, Geraint, not blaming you.’

‘For ever doubting you,’ came his quiet response.

‘Because you wanted to believe the worst of me?’ She shook her dark head. ‘Who could blame you for that, or blame Catrin, for that matter?’

But he shook his head. ‘No. That’s the stupid thing. Catrin never apportioned any blame, Lola—certainly not to you.’

‘But I thought—’

‘Any suspicions came from me, and me alone. Catrin is an independent woman of the nineties, with her own career and her own life. Peter was just a part of that, I realise that now—and she neither asked for nor wanted anything more. He left her some jewellery and paintings, yes, and Catrin was content with that.’

‘Then why?’ asked Lola, gazing at him with a mystified expression.

‘Why seek you out with revenge in mind?’ He moved his shoulders restlessly. ‘That was just me and my arrogant, masculine pride—although at the time I preferred to see it as me protecting Catrin. In a way, I think I felt that I was helping her—as she had helped me all those long, hard years ago, when she brought me up.

‘I needed to know why my sister’s lover had passed her over to leave the most valuable part of his estate to an unknown young woman. I was seething with the injustice of it all! I don’t know what I wanted to do to you, Lola, but the moment I saw you I knew—’

‘Knew what?’ she prompted, her heart thumping like mad.

‘That any vague ideas I’d had of revenge were hopeless, because as soon as I looked into your shining, honest eyes I knew that all I wanted to do was love you.’

‘Was that all?’ She gave a soft, secret smile.

He shook his head. ‘No, that wasn’t all! I discovered that I wanted to marry you, too. To settle down and give you lots of children. All the things I had never wanted before, and had never imagined myself wanting. And then I realised that the reason I had never wanted them before was because I had never met the right woman.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Until now.’

Lola’s eyes shone with unshed tears as she realised that he was giving voice to words she had never thought she would hear. ‘Oh, Geraint,’ she whispered.

‘My parents’ marriage was at the mercy of economics,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Poverty is no basis for a lifetime of contentment. I think that’s what gave me the will to succeed—I was determined never to have to submit to the constraints of not having enough money to support a wife and children.’

Lola blinked, mystified. ‘But you’re rich—and you have the air of a man who has been rich for a long time. There must have been women who have tempted you into marriage before now.’

He shook his dark head. ‘Never!’ he contradicted her simply. ‘Because, conversely, I needed a woman who would love me even if I had nothing.’ His grey eyes were unwavering. ‘Would you love me if I had nothing to give you but my heart, Lola Hennessy?’

Just for a moment she treasured that look he gave her, his narrowed eyes betraying a fleeting trace of vulnerability. But then he must have seen the love shining brightly in her eyes, for he grinned and stood up, then took her into his arms and held her very, very tight.

‘You know I would,’ she whispered huskily, ‘my darling Welshman!’

He tipped her chin up with his fingertip. ‘And marriage, Lola? I want a good, strong marriage,’ he told her. ‘And it will be an equal marriage, too—I’m not too proud to cook and to bath babies. How do you feel about that?’

Lola gazed up at him. What could she say? She seemed to have hitched her star to the original masterful man. But oh, she wouldn’t have it any different!

‘Well?’ he prompted.

‘Yes,’ she told him firmly. ‘Yes, yes, yes! Yes, I’ll marry you, yes, I love you—’

‘I’m going to make love to you,’ he interrupted with a small groan of desire. ‘Right now.’

‘We have a baby next door we’re supposed to be looking after,’ she reminded him in a shaky voice. ‘Or had you forgotten?’

‘No, I hadn’t forgotten.’ Geraint made a mental note to have Lola to himself for at least a year after they were married. Unless. . . ‘Are you pregnant, do you think, sweetheart?’ he asked her quietly.

Lola shook her head. ‘No,’ she said half-regretfully. ‘I let you think I might be as a kind of way of getting my own back—to make you worried. Are you very angry, Geraint?’

He smiled at her tenderly. ‘Angry? No! Relieved? A bit! Disappointed? A little. But we have years ahead to have our babies, Lola—if that’s the way God plans it.’

Lola was so flooded with the feeling of being properly loved that she felt secure enough to confide, ‘It wasn’t just for revenge that I told you I might be pregnant, Geraint.’

His mouth curved. ‘Oh?’

‘Although I hated what I thought you’d done I simply couldn’t resign myself to the thought of never seeing you again. I knew that if you thought there was the remotest possibility of me having a baby it would give you a reason to come back.’

His smile broadened. ‘I would have come back anyway, my darling—I didn’t need a reason. Do you think anything could have kept me away from you, once I’d found you? I’ve spent my whole life looking for you, Lola, and I’m never going to let you go.’

‘Oh, Geraint,’ she sighed, her eyes filling up with tears.

‘Shh,’ he soothed. ‘My only regret is not telling you everything before we made love.’

‘You tried,’ she whispered.

‘Not very hard,’ he admitted. ‘I was too ensnared by you, too worried that you might refuse ever to see me again if you had an inkling of my original motive.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘What time did Triss say she was coming back?’

‘She didn’t, exactly.’

He frowned. ‘Then do you think your mother might babysit for an hour or so—especially if I take you all out to dinner later to celebrate our engagement?’

‘We could always ask her.’ Lola gave him a questioning stare, although the look on his face was enough to make her start to shiver in delicious anticipation. ‘Why?’

‘Go upstairs and wait for me there,’ he instructed, a wicked glint in his eye as he picked up the telephone to punch out the number. ‘And in a minute I’ll show you exactly why.’

‘And you, being you, would never consider getting no for an answer, I suppose?’ said Lola, over her shoulder.

The darkening of his eyes told its own story. ‘Never!’ Geraint replied, and he smiled as he began to speak to Lola’s mother.